Dallas Discussion Thread

[Soapsuds]

Happy 99th Birthday to Priscilla Pointer!

 

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[Vee]

I already outlined my very unmarketable idea for a brief Dallas revival somewhere in here. I don't think you can honestly do anything like that show today without being honest about where oil and fossil fuels have taken us. So it would be a short and fairly bleak miniseries, lol.

Edited May 18, 2023 by Vee

[Khan]

I agree.

[Vee]

I will say not all Dallas stories bore me; I do think the Southern gothic Farlow clan psychodrama with Lady Jessica pretty compelling late in Season 7 so far. Alexis Smith is just eating this up, pure camp but also very good.

[Broderick]

You ought to write your script outline 

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Once the memory of the WB revival becomes more distant, there will doubtlessly be a hunger at some point for a (streaming) reboot.  

We've probably all got ideas of what should be handled entirely differently this go-round, what should be omitted entirely, what should be elaborated on.  

@Franko, I told it backwards (from the novel) about the first Mrs. Gary Ewing -- Vera Rodriguez.  (Flipped through my tattered copy this evening to be sure I said it correctly; I didn't.)  Jock and Miss Ellie did not drive Vera Rodriguez away from Southfork.  It made no difference to them that she was Mexican.  If she made Gary happy, that's all Miss Ellie cared about.  What actually happened is young Gary pitched one of his drunken teenage benders, and Miss Rodriguez immediately went home to her parents and told them she wasn't going to live with a raging alcoholic.  Every "whip-stitchin' member of the Rodriguez tribe" showed up at the ranch, "yammerin' in Spanish" that Vera was NOT getting a divorce, as it was against the Rodriguez family's religion.  Miss Ellie passed around enough Southworth/Ewing money to pay for an annulment and assuage the Rodriguez family pride; Senor Rodriguez then loaded up his daughter & took her home. 

Gary still wanted to be married -- even though Vera Rodriguez was firm that she wasn't planning to live with him as long as he drank -- so he soon married Maureen/Valene. 

[I just remembered the CASH PAYOUT from the Ewings, and I was thinking it was to get rid of Vera.   It wasn't; it was to compensate the Rodriguez family for Gary's alcoholism -- the severity and intensity of which had taken young Vera completely by surprise.]

 

[Vee]

A reboot is probably very viable using some of those old concepts, but I worry in practice (or on network vs. streaming) it would go the way of the Dynasty revival which was sheer camp for camp's sake vs. camp by natural evolution. I feel like Yellowstone is kind of the natural descendant of Dallas, for better or worse quality-wise.

My only real interest is in a brief revival, tying something off with the original characters and the new generation for a closed run, but I won't ramble on about that idea again unless someone asks. Vee's Fanfic Corner has been too active on this forum lately.

[Broderick]

@Vee, I'm certainly interested.

About the novel -- I wouldn't want to leave the impression that Miss Ellie "watched" as Bond Whitson violently raped Jock's troublemaking mistress -- she didn't.  Miss Ellie told Bond, "Do what you gotta do, Bond" and quietly left the apartment building where Roberta lived.  As she pushed the elevator's down button to leave the 10th floor, Miss Ellie told herself, "It ain't no worse than cuttin' the head off of a coiled-up rattlesnake; it's just somethin' that has to be done before somebody gets bit."  

Roberta & Jock's storyline in the novel was actually the "prototype" of what we ultimately saw on television when Jock Ewing revealed to Miss Ellie that he'd been married previously, and his first wife, Amanda, was still alive but institutionalized.  

The way it unfolded here was that shortly after WWII, some of the larger oil companies began sending lobbyists to Washington, to influence legislation making it easier for them to acquire smaller independent companies, such as Ewing Oil. 

Jock Ewing began making frequent trips to Washington (on behalf of the cartel, known as the "Texas Independents") to counteract the effects of lobbyists from the big companies.  Jock's attempts at lobbying were FAR more difficult, of course, because he lacked the influence and connections of the big companies.

Jock decided to play dirty. 

He sucked-up to a corrupt, overweight, sleazy, Bible-thumping, Southern Baptist, United States Congressman from Texas -- Frank Kelly.  While visiting the Dallas area, Frank Kelly suggested to Jock, "Maybe you could fix me up with a sweet-lookin' little whore, as long as she ain't a damn Messican." Jock and his Albino protégé, Bond Whitson, set-up two young local white-trash girls to service the Congressman.  The girls readily agreed to the job for a small amount of money, although one of the girls stipulated, "As long as you don't expeck me to do it with that Albino, on account of I already done it with him once, and he like to scared me half to death.  He's ROUGH with his women." 

Jock arranged for the two girls and the drunk Congressman to have a three-way, and Bond took pictures.  Jock then threatened to pass the photographs around to Congressman Frank Kelly's constituency of Southern Baptists, unless Congressman Kelly introduced legislation favorable to the Texas Independents. 

Using blackmail, Jock now had a U.S. Congressman in the backpocket of the cartel. 

Miss Ellie was at home giving birth to JR the night the photographs of Congressman Kelly were taken, the symbolism being that JR Ewing was brought into the world on a night filled with backstabbing, double-crossing, and corruption. 

Congressman Kelly had a secretary in Washington named Roberta, who always batted her eyes, smiled at Jock, and placed her perfumed body near Jock whenever he visited Congressman Kelly's office to issue his blackmail demands to Kelly. 

Jock knew that he shouldn't sleep with Roberta -- he'd never even considered being unfaithful to Miss Ellie -- but Roberta was a great temptation, and she successfully seduced Jock, beginning a five-year affair.  Each time Jock flew to Washington to lobby or to blackmail Congressman Kelly, he visited Roberta.  Meanwhile, Roberta began compiling a dossier of every dirty deal, every corrupt transaction, every bribe that Jock was a participant in.  She ultimately had an envelope of blackmail material on Jock that was bigger than Jock's envelope of blackmail material on Congressman Kelly. 

When Miss Ellie was giving birth to Baby Number Three, Roberta called Southfork from DC and said, "Hi, I'm Mr. Jock Ewing's secretary in Washington.  Mr. Ewing asked me to call and give Mrs. Eleanor Southworth Ewing the message that the new baby is to be named Robert or Bobby.  Thank you.  Good-bye."  

After Bobby was born and a little time had passed, Miss Ellie became aware of the entire escapade -- that she'd been tricked into naming her son for Jock's mistress and the mistress was in possession of damaging information that could ruin (and potentially bankrupt) Jock Ewing. 

Miss Ellie's first impulse was to throw Jock off Southfork and raise JR, Gary, and Bobby on her own.  But after agonizing over the situation and hearing Jock's pleas for forgiveness, she said, "Jock, I'm mighty disappointed in you.  I'm gonna have to go away for a little while, but don't worry about me -- I'm takin' Bond with me as my escort."

Bond didn't want to be a part of what was about to happen, but he would do anything for Jock & Miss Ellie.  When Bond was young, everyone laughed at him -- the whites, the blacks, and the Mexicans alike -- because of Bond's snow-white hair, his colorless skin that "looked like the underbelly of a snake", and his pale eyes that "looked like a rabbit's eyes but had the empty expression of a diamondback rattler".  Jock overheard people making fun of the kid -- adults and children alike -- and Jock had enough of it.  He took pity on the boy, brought him to Southfork and gave him a room over the garage.  Miss Ellie didn't think she'd be able to tolerate having the "strange-looking creature" lurking around the house, but after a few days, she forgot he was any different from anyone else.  Jock bought him some sunglasses so he could hide his pale eyes when he wanted to, some gloves to cover his pale hands, and long-sleeved shirts to cover his colorless arms.  The superstitious people around the ranch still avoided Bond (or made the sign of the cross when he passed) but Jock and Miss Ellie didn't appear to notice anything unusual about Bond, and he was eternally grateful to them. (Even Congressman Kelly observed, "I don't know what that thang is you've got drivin' your car, but that damn sure ain't no Messican!")  The only thing that worried Miss Ellie were the whispered stories from the ranch hands that Bond had a VERY VIOLENT & SAVAGE sex life, injuring and maiming the few prostitutes who were willing to take his money and have sex with him.  

So Miss Ellie and Bond paid a visit to Roberta in Washington. Miss Ellie's instructions to Bond Whitson were, "Do whatever you've gotta do.  But get that envelope of information she's got on Jock, and shut her damn mouth up." 

A few hours later, Bond came out of Roberta's apartment with the incriminating envelope.  Roberta was found wandering around in Virginia the following day, her mind completely gone from the harrowing ordeal she'd endured with Bond.  Jock was notified that his "secretary" had suffered a complete mental breakdown and needed to be institutionalized.  Jock told Miss Ellie he felt obligated to pay the sanitarium bills himself, considering the relationship he'd previously had with Roberta, and Miss Ellie nodded.  "I speck that's the least you can do."   

Jock and Miss Ellie's marriage was soon back to normal -- and on equal footing now -- with Jock understanding that Miss Ellie had the guts and brains to take control of a hopeless situation and that Bond would do whatever Miss Ellie asked. 

(Bond Whitson was eventually stabbed to death by a prostitute with whom he got too rough, which led to period of grief and anguish that Jock and Miss Ellie could barely even speak of, and led to another drunken binge from young Gary.)   

[Paul Raven]

@Broderick thanks for posting that. Wow heavy stuff. Can't imagine our Miss Ellie being a party to anything like that. I guess Julie Grey and the red file was patterned along those lines and Roberta was softened into Amanda. The Roberta/Bobby connection was wild.

I think they missed the boat with Amanda -she could have had some secrets locked away like Roberta. Did she really have any story apart from being a minor roadblock to Jock/Ellie?

[Broderick]

With Amanda, I believe the idea was that Jock was willing to "throw away a sick wife" at the very time Miss Ellie was learning she had breast cancer.  Once the breast cancer scare had been handled, there was no longer any need for the "ghost" of Amanda to hang over the marriage.  Another prematurely "burned" story, in my opinion, that didn't yield much growth or development for any of the characters (although it did lead to that jaw-dropping scene in which Amanda brushed Jock aside and ran to Bobby, believing him to be the "real" Jock.)   

[AbcNbc247]

Damn, I want to buy this book too lol 

I’ve heard some of the stories from it, like JR and Maureen (Valene) But all the stuff about Miss Ellie and this Bond character is totally new to me. 

She showed up again in Season 8. It turned out she was the one who had the documents that said Jock was the sole owner of Ewing Oil, and that Jason and Digger didn’t each own a third of it.

[Vee]

All I'll say is that looking back on my own revival idea now from awhile back, I think instead of John Ross as the villain like the last attempt at a return (something David Jacobs objected to on the TNT show, finding John Ross vs. Christopher in the same moral roles as their parents a retread of J.R. and Bobby) you could do something different. Gary and Val's son Bobby and John Ross would be the central poles of the story, but the main antagonist would instead be J.R.’s younger son by his hick wife (Cally). That son (call him Joshua, or whatever) would be the heavy, raised outside the Ewings and married to a Chinese national wife who is a brilliant international businesswoman and the brains of the outfit. They would have global empire aspirations. So Joshua the younger heir and his wife would still be trying to drill baby drill, while Bobby II is into other energies and concepts and trying to save the earth, married to the female lead, a supposedly reformed environmental radical/activist, possibly one with a past with John Ross. A reformed John Ross would be caught in the middle between the two dueling men in more the kind of role Jacobs suggested for him, a heroic but morally conflicted protagonist torn between his father's way and a better way. I figure that's how you square the circle with the TNT show's continuity (where John Ross was the heavy) while largely ignoring or avoiding referencing any of it much.* Maybe you could even toss in Meg MacKenzie as a side player, a political operator working with/romancing one of the men while utilizing her Sumner connections.

The frame of reference for my idea was always the socially conscious political drama/soap opera of the last recent season of Borgen on Netflix, where climate change and oil (in Greenland) and fighting over those dwindling resources in a hazardous time were the central issues. Here, a vicious heat crisis would scour Texas a la the UK's horrible heatwave this past year, with people dying in the streets; call it divine retribution for the Ewings. The key veterans would appear in supporting roles or cameo (I did like the idea of Sue Ellen having run for office from the revival show). And maybe you can excavate ol' Pam from the dead after all near the end as the emotional climax to the thing if you somehow got Victoria Principal to agree, which would probably never happen. Anyway, do it all in 8-15 episodes and call it a day. It would be a dark story, with elements of soap but it would not be meant to continue on.

*(Of course, if it ignored the TNT show entirely then you could make up whatever, like the antagonist being John Ross' own adult technocrat son, or Christopher or whoever else, so I dunno.)

[Broderick]

Well, I like that.  I especially like reversing the roles, or at the very least having John Ross as the character who is most torn and conflicted between 'good' and 'bad', with him swinging from first one side and then to the other, depending upon what the particular issue is, or who is currently exerting the most influence over him.  He's a character who has SEEN bad, and he's a character who should KNOW good.  I feel his characterization was squandered a good bit in the revival.  

[Vee]

I would've done it the simple way Jacobs originally posited - John Ross good, Christopher bad - except I was trying to account for the TNT revival, which I figure enough people watched and which had Hagman's last performances. On that show, John Ross was the heavy and Christopher the good guy, and Christopher apparently died at the end. So I adjusted for that and came up with something else.

[Broderick]

@Vee, And I think you did a VERY good job.  (Although I'm a 'denialist' that Christopher is dead, lol.)  

[Vee]

There would be more Latino and Black characters - probably the spouses - but I also thought of maybe having a fourth wild card, a cutthroat Latino tycoon who is alleged to be Jock's long-lost son or daughter pulling rank on all of them, positing that the Steve Forrest character from the later seasons was Jock after all. Except that question would of course never be answered and the truth would never be confirmed.